South African Mini Milktarts

Pastry:
Place the flour and salt in a bowl. Cut the butter into cubes and place into the flour, covering the butter completely. Cut the butter into the flour forming large crumbs.

Mix together the lemon juice and ice water and add it to the pastry mixture. Knead until smooth, cover and place in the fridge for 15 minutes.

Roll the pastry dough on a floured surface and cut circles to fit a standard sized muffin pan. This amount makes 24 pastry crusts.

Milk/Custard:
In a pan, add the milk, salt and butter and heat over medium-low heat.

In a separate heatproof bowl, mix the cornstarch/cornflour, custard powder and flour together and add the 2 tablespoons of the cold milk to form a paste. Then take 1/4 cup of the hot milk mixture and add it to the paste and stir. Do this twice. Then pour the flour mixture/paste back into the hot milk mixture, stirring continuously. This will help the hot milk mixture to thicken.

Add half the sugar to the hot milk mixture and increase heat to medium to bring to a boil, stirring continuously. Remove from the heat as soon as the mixture starts to thicken. Set aside.

Separate eggs and beat the egg whites until stiff peak stage adding the rest of the sugar gradually.

In a separate bowl mix the egg yolks together. Take 1/4 cup of the hot milk mixture and add to the egg mixture. Do this twice. Then pour the egg mixture back into the hot milk mixture, stirring continuously.

Fold the egg whites into the hot milk mixture. Add the almond extract and blend thoroughly. Spoon the mixture into the muffin pastry crusts and bake in an oven at 400F for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for a further 15 minutes.

When cool, sprinkle the top of the pie with cinnamon. Serve chilled.